Hard to tell at this point. Assuming they keep doing 10 levels per expansion and that they actually manage to start doing them yearly, that's 5 years just to 150, not counting the months until WoD releases. Sure, even after it "dies", it's likely that it might still get expansions, but even at 10 levels per expansion, 255 is still a long way from now.

Originally Posted by Tya

As a warlock, allow me to be the first to say that I get tremendous amounts of joy from watching fear pathing take you to Africa.

Originally Posted by Drayarr

Twinking is like going back to school when you are 30, just to be smarter than the other kids.

People said the same thing about level 99 being hard coded. I doubt if anyone here has any idea whatsoever as to whether the core leveling code is restricted to a one-byte token or otherwise. I'm not going to worry about 255. I doubt if I'll be still playing the game in another 15-30 years. If I am, I'm happy enough to let Blizzard worry about it.

I doubt it's "hardcoded" but it's actually the max that can be reached via commands ingame right now. Seeing how they can squish things like gear and the experience needed for each level, I'd say the leveling system is much more flexible than, for example, how bags are stored in the database, which does seem to be a problem for them to change.

So yes, they could reach that and more if needed. They could also squish levels, but it would make the game feel grindy (every level would require much more effort).

yup. currently the level is stored as an unsigned(never negative) 8bit(1 byte) number. this allows for values between 0-255 in decimal.

in c++ it was likely defined as "unsigned __int8" or if this was a limitation in the database.. like sql for instance it would be a "tinyint".

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Originally Posted by Soulwind

I doubt it's "hardcoded" but it's actually the max that can be reached via commands ingame right now. Seeing how they can squish things like gear and the experience needed for each level, I'd say the leveling system is much more flexible than, for example, how bags are stored in the database, which does seem to be a problem for them to change.

So yes, they could reach that and more if needed. They could also squish levels, but it would make the game feel grindy (every level would require much more effort).

it is hard coded. it would be relatively easy to expand. you would have to change the declaration of the variables and a ton of object/function calls.. but it's relatively easy in the grand scheme of things.

I honestly don't think so. I honestly think the highest level we will see is level 120. That would mean at least 2 more expansions. WoW is my life and all but I don't see it lasting past another couple more expansions at this time. I say we have till the year 2020. In 2014 WOD will come then with the next expansion being in 2016 and the final one being in 2018. After that I see the game stopping once the last expansions content has been complete it will slowly die off over time and by 2020 or 2021 be dead.

I honestly don't think so. I honestly think the highest level we will see is level 120. That would mean at least 2 more expansions. WoW is my life and all but I don't see it lasting past another couple more expansions at this time. I say we have till the year 2020. In 2014 WOD will come then with the next expansion being in 2016 and the final one being in 2018. After that I see the game stopping once the last expansions content has been complete it will slowly die off over time and by 2020 or 2021 be dead.

wows run out of ideas. it's a constant revisit to old content. the cycle between demon and old-god apocalypses is getting pretty boring.

People said the same thing about level 99 being hard coded. I doubt if anyone here has any idea whatsoever as to whether the core leveling code is restricted to a one-byte token or otherwise. I'm not going to worry about 255. I doubt if I'll be still playing the game in another 15-30 years. If I am, I'm happy enough to let Blizzard worry about it.

WoW has never been hardcoded to 99 as far as I know, not even in Vanilla. There's no possible way to go beyond 255 though, not even if you tinker with private servers or w/e.

Even then, I'm kind of expecting them to introduce Paragon leveling from Diablo into WoW one day.

I can see them doing that with the next expansion. 100 would be a good level to switch over to... maybe... Paragon Levels, or something similar.

Not only WoW has begun to be invaded by Diablo or other games items/pets whatever and viceversa (some of Diablos legendary items),but paragon levels too?
I sure hope WoW will never go the path Diablo franchise is.
What next?New expansion where we travel to hell and fight its minions?

actually, max level 255 is hard encoded. they would have to revamp the entire game from ground zero to get the level cap over 255.

Please explain exactly how you know that level 255 is "hard coded"...

I always like it when people just make stuff up and present it as fact.

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Originally Posted by MasterOfKnees

There's no possible way to go beyond 255 though

Explain please.

The number of levels a character can reach will be dictated by other reasons, not any software limits. The level number a character can reach is no more difficult to change in the game than a number stat on any piece of gear.

I think the ilvl squish in WoE will be a precursor to an actual level squish that comes whey clean-up character abilities.. the current levels are really arbitrary and the more they nerf the XP requirements the less that the individual levels matter.

I think Blizzard will say "We will make character levels go from 1-50, but each level will really matter a lot. Guaranteed new abilities, guaranteed new dungeons, guaranteed jump in player power, etc."

I always like it when people just make stuff up and present it as fact.

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Explain please.

The number of levels a character can reach will be dictated by other reasons, not any software limits. The level number a character can reach is no more difficult to change in the game than a number stat on any piece of gear.

as of right now the value for your character's level is stored as an unsigned 8bit number. anybody with any programming experience knows what this means. it means that you can only have values between 0 and 255

I think we'd see a level squish before then. At that point the first 30 levels would happen from each wolf you killed in the first quest in Northshire if they wanted to keep the overall levelling time from 1 to cap roughly equal.

you really think people are gonna do level 1-255 you wil lget a free level 150 same thing there doing in WOD a free 90 cos people are bored of leveling thru old outdated stuff

Actually I played on a private server where there was no lvl cap... I was lvl 10,000. It was very custom (I was a warrior but could learn mage spells). It was pretty awesome.
What I'm trying to say that you can go beyond the "hard coded lvl 255" if you put effort on coding. There is no boundary.

as of right now the value for your character's level is stored as an unsigned 8bit number. anybody with any programming experience knows what this means. it means that you can only have values between 0 and 255

for example.

level 0
00000000

level 1
00000001

level 2
00000010

level 10
00001010

level 60
00111100

level 70
01000110

level 80
01010000

level 85
01010101

level 90
01011010

level 255
11111111

it's easy binary.

binary code for level 1000 a 4 digit level not that they would ever get that high but its 1111101000

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why are people thinking theres some sort of cap on binary code some games have way more than 255 levels

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you could go to like level 2 billion if you wanted with a binary code of like 111111111111111011110000001101010101010110 or something rediculous like that, the number is just an example not an actual fact of the number i stated

binary code for level 1000 a 4 digit level not that they would ever get that high but its 1111101000

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why are people thinking theres some sort of cap on binary code some games have way more than 255 levels

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you could go to like level 2 billion if you wanted with a binary code of like 111111111111111011110000001101010101010110 or something rediculous like that, the number is just an example not an actual fact of the number i stated

you're missing the point. I'm showing why there is a limitation and how that limitation works. Yes, you can define some ridiculously huge custom types in C and other languages.. but will you actually need them? usually not and all you would be doing is wasting memory and storage space for EVERY CHARACTER EVER CREATED IN THE GAME.

binary code for level 1000 a 4 digit level not that they would ever get that high but its 1111101000

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why are people thinking theres some sort of cap on binary code some games have way more than 255 levels

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you could go to like level 2 billion if you wanted with a binary code of like 111111111111111011110000001101010101010110 or something rediculous like that, the number is just an example not an actual fact of the number i stated

Because the level is stored in an unsigned byte, which is 8 bits. 11111111, 255.

It would be simple enough to replace with a 32 bit integer or something, allowing up to ~2 billion, but as someone said earlier, it would require changing all other functions that rely on this variable.

People said the same thing about level 99 being hard coded. I doubt if anyone here has any idea whatsoever as to whether the core leveling code is restricted to a one-byte token or otherwise. I'm not going to worry about 255. I doubt if I'll be still playing the game in another 15-30 years. If I am, I'm happy enough to let Blizzard worry about it.

ive never seen anyone saying 99 was hardcoded, but then again people spam all kinds of nonsense. you can test it yourself by making a sandbox, 255 is hard coded, but i doubt we will get an expansion where we get 50 levels or even 100 to level thatd be hilarious